• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 282 0

ship to England. Acquiring wealth he had also acquired a complete faith in the advancements of Europe. Perhaps this would prove to be his fatal flaw. The ship’s journey was twenty-one days long. He assumed he would be driven instantly from the Tilbury docks to the best doctor in Harley Street, where, he thought, perhaps there would be a respectful crowd outside, with maybe a few Ceylonese who were fully aware of his financial status. Hector de Silva had read one Russian novel and he could imagine it all, whereas a cure in Colombo seemed to rely on village magic, astrology, and botanical charts in a spidery handwriting. He had grown up knowing some local cures, such as quickly urinating on a foot to alleviate the pain from sea pencils. Now he was being told that for a mad dog’s bite the seeds of the black ummattaka, or thorn apple, should be soaked in cow piss, ground into a paste, and taken internally. Then, twenty-four hours later, he should take a cold bath and drink buttermilk. The provinces were full of these cures. Four out of ten of them worked. That wasn’t good enough.

However, Sir Hector de Silva did coerce one Moratuwa ayurvedic to accompany him on the sea voyage and to bring his sack full of locally gathered herbs and some Nepal-grown ummattaka seeds and roots. Thus, along with two established doctors, this ayurvedic boarded the ship. These medical men shared a suite on one side of Sir Hector’s central bedroom, while his wife and his twenty-three-year-old daughter shared one on the other side.

And so in mid-ocean the Moratuwa ayurvedic opened up his steamer trunk, which contained unguents and fluids, brought out the thorn apple seeds that he had previously immersed in cow’s urine, mixed them with some jaggery paste to disguise the flavour, and scurried down the hall to give the millionaire a cup of this catarrh-like sauce to swallow, followed by a good French brandy, which the philanthropist insisted on. This was carried out twice a day, and it was the ayurvedic’s only duty. So while the two professional doctors looked after the patient for the rest of the day, the man from Moratuwa had the run of the ship, though it was made clear his strolls were limited to Tourist Class. He too must have wandered about the vessel, aware of the lack of smells on the obsessively cleansed ship, until one day he picked up the familiar perfume of burning hemp and followed it to its source on D level, paused at the metal door, knocked, heard a response, and entered to be welcomed by Mr. Fonseka and a boy.

We had been at sea several days when this visit occurred. And it would be the ayurvedic who revealed the last few details of the Hector de Silva story, with hesitation at first, but eventually nearly every interesting detail came from him. Later on, through us, he met Mr. Daniels, who befriended him and invited him down to the hold to view his garden, where they spent hours arguing and discussing the forensics of plants. Cassius too made a new friend of the ayurvedic and immediately requested a few betel leaves from the southern doctor, who had brought a cache with him.

The surreal revelations about the man with a curse on his head thrilled us. We gathered every fragment of Sir Hector’s story and remained hungry for more. We cast our minds back to the night of embarkation in Colombo harbour and tried to recall, or to imagine at least, a stretcher, and the body of the millionaire being carried at a slight tilt up the gangplank. Whether we had witnessed this or not, the scene was now indelible in our minds. For the first time in our lives we were interested in the fate of the upper classes; and gradually it became clear to us that Mr. Mazappa and his musical legends and Mr. Fonseka with his songs from the Azores and Mr. Daniels with his plants, who had been until then like gods to us, were only minor characters, there to watch how those with real power progressed or failed in the world.

Afternoons

IT HAD BEEN EVIDENT WHEN MR. DANIELS offered the three of us betel leaves to chew that Cassius was already familiar with them.